Can Insurers Benefit from Another Database in the Cloud?

What's the significance of launching a NoSQL (stands for “Not Only SQL”) database? Because these are the engines that are being used to manage, process and store “Big Data,” most of which is unstructured files – from weblogs to photos to images.

What's the significance of Amazon getting into the NoSQL database market? It's another essential part of the enterprise software stack now available on-demand, from the cloud.

What's the significance to insurance carriers? There will probably be limited impact initially, but there are promising potential advantages in the long run. For example, managers and professionals seeking to roll out new product lines or increase the functionality of current operations have a place to quickly turn and build data stores that have the full backup and protection of the Amazon organization.

This provides greater flexibility over requisitioning budget for new database licenses. Of course, unstructured data, such as image files, are a critical part of insurance workflows. Plus, it enables analytics to be run against these files.

On-premises data centers and systems aren't going away, and will be part of insurance companies for a long tome to come. And there are concerns about data security and regulations that need to be addressed. But there are more and more opportunities to innovate and expand into new areas using this new breed of resources offered by Amazon, RackSpace and IBM.